Spring cleaning: Dana Holgorsen ready to get on field at UH

Dana Holgorsen greets well-wishers during halftime of a Houston basketball game at Feritta Center in January. Holgorsen was hired by UH after eight years at West Virginia.

Photo: Karen Warren, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer

Dana Holgorsen has a perfectly acceptable but mostly unused office at the University of Houston’s alumni and athletics building, including a mammoth desk he suspects may date back to the Bill Yeoman era.

Since he was hired in January after eight years at West Virginia to replace Major Applewhite as UH’s head football coach, however, Holgorsen has spent most of his time in the adjacent staff meeting room, sandwiched by a conference table, a laptop and a room-length whiteboard with the names, faces and grade-point averages of the 85 or so players who will take the field for spring workouts beginning Tuesday.

The big board has been his primary focus for the last 10 weeks. Some things he likes. Some he doesn’t. Some can be changed quickly. Others will require some time.

Tuesday, though, Holgorsen will spend less time gazing at the board and more time watching video on his laptop, charting progress during the 15 practice sessions, including the April 12 spring game, to prepare for a season that begins with a daunting Aug. 31 road trip to Oklahoma.

It’s a multifaceted style of preparation for a program in need of a fresh start, but a familiar one.

“It’s been remarkably similar to what I did at West Virginia,” Holgorsen said. “Both are programs that have won games. The expectations are similar, to win a lot of games.

“It was like that at West Virginia. You have to get good quick, but you want to build for the future.”

The Cougars’ immediate present includes three scrimmage days, five practice days that will include tackling and seven days to install Holgorsen’s offense, which may or may not take on full-fledged Air Raid characteristics, depending on his personnel and his instincts, and a defense under the direction of coordinator Joe Cauthen that will include the switch from a three-man to a four-man front.

“With 15 practice days, you can do all that,” Holgorsen said. “It’s all about getting to know the players and seeing what they will do. It’s a fresh start for some. But we know who our main guys are.”

King one of the keys

That list starts with quarterback D’Eriq King, who is on the mend from a knee injury suffered in mid-November, and includes receivers Marquez Stevenson and Keith Corbin, offensive linemen Josh Jones and Braylon Jones and defensive linemen Payton Turner and Aymiel Fleming.

“D’Eriq has great leadership skills,” Holgorsen said. “He needs to get comfortable with the offense and how I call plays and with our nonverbal communication. We will communicate all game long with signals, and he needs to understand how I operate the tempo of what we do.”

Tuesday’s initial practice marks the next phase of a relaunch that for Holgorsen began with the addition of five new strength and conditioning coaches in January. NCAA rules allow for two hours per week that involve football activities, with an hour each for individual on-field technique work and film study, plus additional face time for general getting-to-know-you conversations and for academic discussions.

The latter topic is the source of some of the more interesting notations on Holgorsen’s whiteboard, which include grade-point averages and progress toward graduation alongside each player’s name and mug shot.

He said that while the team GPA is in good shape, he has his eyes on a few players who need to bolster their academic standing.

“I have to bring them in and say that if you don’t bring up your GPA, I’m not going to coach you. Why should I let you go through spring practice if your GPA is a 1.16? You’re not going to be here (in the fall),” he said. “They need to go to class and be a student-athlete.”

Other whiteboard panels include Holgorsen’s thoughts on remaining scholarships — he has five more to offer, which means he’ll be looking for more talent as winter turns to spring and spring approaches summer — and on the best strategy to manage the NCAA rule that allows players to be redshirted if they play no more than four games in a season.

Redshirt questions to answer

The Cougars have 26 seniors, and Holgorsen said it’s not out of the question that some could be redshirted this fall after playing the allowable four games.

“We will pay attention to that and green light and red light people,” he said. “If we can win a game and save a guy, we need to pay attention to that.”

Other than consequences from past years with which he has to deal this year, though, Holgorsen isn’t putting much stock on how the Cougars looked on the field last season.

“I don’t know what (UH) did last year,” he said. “We have our own system that we feel pretty good about. It was pretty good at West Virginia, it was pretty good when I was here as an assistant and for eight years at Texas Tech and a year at Oklahoma State.”

The guy running the system, though, has changed, and tracking that change in Holgorsen’s style and operating system may represent one of the more intriguing elements of this season for UH partisans.

“I do know that offensively, it ain’t about scoring points and going fast and throwing the ball over the place,” he said. “It’s about controlling the game, helping your defense, doing what you’ve got to do to win the game.

“That’s way more important than what your stats are or doing specific things to get your name in the paper or to get your name hot. It’s about controlling the game the way you need to control the game to win the game.”

Another thing has changed, too. At age 47, Holgorsen said he may have to give up the past conceit he once shared with his former boss, Mike Leach, of listing all his play options on a half-sized sheet of paper.

“Leach and I were known for that half-sheet of paper, but with that size of print, I can’t read it anymore,” he said, smiling. “I’m either going to have to go with the Denny’s (menu-sized) one, or I’ll have to wear glasses.”

And as for the office next to the staff room, he’s renovating that space as a showcase for recruits, with strategically placed jerseys of the NFL Draft picks he coached at West Virginia.

The desk has got to go, too, he said.

“My goal is to get the desk out of here and sit on the floor with a laptop,” he said. “I’m trying to get some work done here.”

David Barron reports on sports media, college football and Olympic sports for the Houston Chronicle. He joined the Houston Chronicle in 1990 after stints at the Dallas bureau of United Press International (1984-90), the Waco Tribune-Herald (1978-84) and the Tyler Morning Telegraph (1975-78). He has been a contributor to Dave Campbell's Texas Football since 1980, serving as high school editor from 1984 through 2000 and as Managing Editor from 1990 through 2004. A native of Tyler, he is a graduate of John Tyler High School, Tyler Junior College and The University of Texas at Austin.